Red alert / Global systemic crisis – September-October 2012: When the trumpets of Jericho ring out seven times for the world before the crisis

The progression of world events unfolds in accordance with the anticipations mapped out by LEAP/E2020 during these last few quarters. Euroland has finally come out from its political torpor and short-termism since François Hollande’s election (1) as France’s president and the Greeks have just confirmed their willingness to resolve their problems within Euroland (2) thus contradicting all the Anglo-Saxon media and Euro sceptics’ “forecasts”. From now on, Euroland (in fact the EU minus the United Kingdom) will therefore be able to move forward and create a true project of political integration, economic efficiency and democratization over the 2012-2016 period as LEAP/E2020 anticipated last February (GEAB N°62. It’s positive news but, for the coming six-month periods, this “second Renaissance” of the European project (3) will really be the only good news at world level.

All the other components of the global situation are in fact pointed in a negative, even catastrophic, direction. Here again, the main media are starting to echo a long-standing situation anticipated by our team for summer 2012. Indeed, in one form or another, more often on the inside pages than in big headlines (monopolized for months by Greece and the Euro (4)), one now finds the following 13 topics:

1. Global recession (no engine of growth anywhere / end of the myth of the “US recovery”) (5)
2. Growing insolvency of the Western banking and financial system and henceforth partially recognized as such
3. Growing frailty of key financial assets such as sovereign debts, real estate and CDSs underpinning the world’s major banks’ balance sheets
4. Fall off in international trade (6)
5. Geopolitical tensions (in particular in the Middle East) approaching the point of a regional explosion
6. Lasting global geopolitical blockage at the UN
7. Rapid collapse of the whole of the Western asset-backed retirement system (7)
8. Growing political divisions within the world’s “monolithic” powers (USA, China, Russia)
9. Lack of “miracle” solutions as in 2008 /2009, because of the growing impotence of many of the major Western central banks (Fed, BoE, BoJ) and States’ indebtedness
10. Credibility in freefall for all countries having to assume the double load of public and excessive private debt (8)
11. Inability to control/slow down the advance of mass and long-term unemployment
12. Failure of monetarist and financial stimulus policies such as “pure” austerity policies
13. Quasi-systematic ineffectiveness henceforth of the alternative or recent international closed groups, G20, G8, Rio+20, WTO,… on all the key topics of what is no longer in fact a world agenda absent any consensus: economy, finances, environment, conflict resolution, fight against poverty…